TITLES: X

XASTHUR Nocturnal Poisoning CD $13.98
Blood Fire Death

An injection of pure dread from this one-man, home recorded black metal project. Nocturnal Poisoning is a grey blast of distortion and baroque melodies, eight songs of buzzing chaotic riffs and rumbling drums, mid-tempo post-Burzum filth with awesome arpeggios that repeat endlessly over the thick haze of amp hiss and fuzzy distortion, all building up a suffocating, ominous atmosphere. Buried vocals, waltzy minor key doominess, crazed thrashing whiteouts, droning dreamlike keyboards, and lots of weird bits and unexpected changes are all wrapped up in spectacularly lo-fi production soaked in 4-track tape hiss, cable buzz, and drop outs that are as much a part of Xasthur's sound as the buzzsaw blur riffs and blasting drum machines. Essential outsider black metal, a depressing black hole of hopelessness and despair. Total trance inducing darkness.

XASTHUR The Funeral of Being CD $13.98
Blood Fire Death

We think that 2003's The Funeral Of Being is one of the best blasts of dissonant misanthropy to creep out of Xasthur thus far. The product of one Malefic (who has recently appeared with Sunn O))) both on live and on record), Xasthur conjures an even icier atmosphere of dread than Nocturnal Poisoning as buzzing, trebly guitars and buried drumming swirl together into a grey droning wash infested with hateful, blurred howls, everything coated in tape hiss and distortion (even the baroque keyboards). The whole album has a dreamlike, muted presence, and moves into a nightmarish ambient dimension as you travel deeper into it's maw, while baring the sort of fang that made early Ulver and Darkthrone so crucial. An essential document of monochromatic blackened psych. Pure frozen dread.

XASTHUR / LEVIATHAN The Funeral of Being CD $12.98
Battle Kommand

Another crucial USBM release that I've been wanting to stock for ages is finally on our shelves. The Xasthur/Leviathan split LP first came out as a vinyl only release through Profound Lore and has gone on to become a collectors item among fans of the contempo USBM underground, but Battle Kommand stepped in to reissue the release on CD for those of us that missed it the first time round, and has included four bonus tracks not found on the LP. It's tough to argue that Xasthur and Leviathan are two of the biggest names in the newer wave of psychedelic, loner black metal that has swept across the country since the mid-90s, and this full-length album demonstrates each artist's dark energies effectively.The first half of the album showcases seven tracks from Xasthur, including a cover of Katatonia's "Palace Of Frost" and a blazing "rehearsal track", and Malefic creates a thick suffocating deathshroud of wobbly shoegaze guitars and midpaced downer buzz, beautiful and utterly sorrowful, his ghoulish screams buried beneath layers of hiss and fuzz. "Conjuration Of Terror" is a vicious storm of blastbeats and thrashy buzzsaw drone, while "Achieve Emptiness" is a gorgeous funereal pipe organ requiem that sounds like the organ notes are melting and dripping down the walls of a dank cavern, growing more and more ominous as the piece progresses. Leviathan's half of the album is only three songs, but they add up to over 30 minutes of material, and they're some of the best Leviathan tracks out there, crushing mid-paced blackdoom dirge and buzzing, complex black metal, eerie keyboard figures floating freely over layers and layers of discordant, distorted riffs piled on so thick that they become a swirl of washed out fuzz, guided through channels of convoluted song structures that border on prog. The bonus Leviathan track is a cover of Judas Iscariot’s "Where the Winter Beals Incessant".
MP3 SAMPLE: XASTHUR "Keeper Of Sharpened Blades (And Ominous Fates)" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: LEVIATHAN "The Remotest Cipher (Beside The Last Breath Banished)" (excerpt)

XASTHUR / STRIBORG split 7" EP $12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.
Autopsy Kitchen

This one's been in the works for awhile and now it's finally here, a split 7" between Xasthur and Striborg, two of the mightiest entities in the damaged psychedelic black metal underground. Australia's outsider black metal genius Sin Nanna delivers the new Striborg track "The Epitome Of Misanthropy", the first half of which stumbles through a lo-fi fog of trashcan blastbeats, plodding dirgey riffs and totally blown out guitars swirling into a fuzzy black mist, a weird and unearthly blur of shredded blackness, but then the last half of the song suddenly lurches into an awesome outro of upbeat drumming and -quite surprisingly- a pretty guitar melody that wobbles out of phase, breaking thru the fug like a single beam of sunlight cutting through shadows. Wow! Then it's on to the other side, where USBM titan Xasthur offers up "A Tortured Shallow Grave", a blown out and impossibly mournful minor key dirge, wailing feedback and woozy guitar arpeggios snaking wraithlike around visions of toppled gravestones and ivy-covered tombs, evoking a misty graveyard atmosphere that sticks to you like an early morning mist. So bleak and otherwordly, one of the raddest Xasthur tracks we've heard, with *real* drums rumbling off in the distance, the whole track soaked in murky fuzz and tape hiss! All together it's an amazing dose of low-fi blackened psychedelia, essential for fans of damaged, deranged basement blackness. This clear vinyl 7" is limited to 800 copies, and we're one of the few mailorders/stores that are actually carrying it, as most of the copies were sold out through Autopsy Kitchen. The glued-pocket jacket features some great washed out photography from Hakan of Total Holocaust Records, too! We've got a very limited quantity of the clear vinyl here, so move fast!

XBXRX Sixth In Sixes CD $14.98
Polyvinyl

Latest series of art-damaged no-wave-core tantrums from XBXRX, who distill primo Sonic Youth style vibes into bright flashes of hardcore skronk mayhem. Still haven't seen these cats live, tho we hear it's a sight to behold. We did stay with them in Mobile, Alabama once though, and must say that they were quality people. This first offering for new label home Polyvinyl sports Weasel Walter of Flying Luttenbachers fame on drums and behind the mixing desk, and fans of the Luttenbachers/Orthrelm/Locust school of hypercharged discordant punk thought will likely love these 15 jams. Heavy, fast paced avant-noise punk delivered at maximum volume with feral vox and total electronic mess.

XEXYZ Primeval Mountain CD-R $10.98
Illinoisian Thunder

More brilliant outsider USBM weirdness from The Reverand J.R. Preston, whose name you might recognize from bands like Tjogtjar, Blood Cult, and Enbilulugugal, and as pretty much one of the key focal figures around the Dipsomanic and Illinoisian Thunder labels. Those two imprints are essentially ground zero for an entire swarm of demented, inebriated black metal sounds coming out of the basements and bedrooms of middle America right now. Sure, everyone into black metal knows about the austere psychedelic black haze appearing over the West Coast that's been summoned by outfits like Xasthur, Leviathan, Draugar, and Crebain, but there's also an even weirder, skuzzier black crud emanating from places like the garages of Illinois, a gritty, low-fi, absurdist black metal weaned on 80's horror VHS tapes, cheap musical equipment, Nintendo games, Venom LPs, and dirtweed. Tjolgtjar has been leading this charge with their crazed black metal-meets-70's classic rock fury and trans-dimensional mythos, but there's other sounds we're hearing that might be even more fucked up and warped, if that's possible...like Xexyz, another permutation of the Reverand's mutant psyche. This half-hour disc came out in 2006 and is now totally sold out from the label, but we've got a small stash of copies left. What's so cool about Xexyz? Crack open this grim-looking disc, packaged in cruddy laser-printer spewed artwork, and yer quickly infested with an assault of blurry, buzzy low-fi black metal that has replaced the ominous keyboards with 8-bit Nintendo music. That's right, not only does Xexyz use a Nintendo for their electronic melodies, but they have crafted entire songs around the looping game soundtracks for classic cartridges like Metroid, Rygar, and more. Buzzing, Burzumic riffs and weird dissonant chords ride on blasting trashcan drumming alongside those classic game themes and weird mewling Muppet vocals, and the marriage of classic NES game themes and grungy basement BM ends up sounding pretty fucking awesome! There's eight songs on this disc, all of 'em fading out into nothingness (rememberm the original game scores didn't have an ending, they just looped over and over again for eternity), and the last two tracks are the most abstracted: 'Garloz' is a druggy murk of guitars and 8-bit music running backwards for trippy, screwed up effect, and 'Attack Of The Great Panther' is an absolute brainmelt of pixelated NES glitches, spluttery blastbeats, and croaked Satanic utterances. Pretty freaking great! Like I said, this is TOTALLY sold out from the label, and we only have around 5 copies here!

XOME Itch CD-R $10.98
Snip-Snip

Rude,abrasive harsh noise attacks delivered at lightning fast velocity. Fun stuff from this long running junkblast artist- shrill static assaults and white noise scultures teetering on the edge of collapse. Handassembled slimline packaging.